An Hour Exercise Enough, For Women With Normal Weight

By Devaki

Monday, March 29, 2010, 11:51

The moderate exercise helps middle-aged women avoid putting on the pounds, but only if they are already going on normal weight. The women who are overweight or obese do not appear to reap the same benefits in terms of weight-gain prevention, says the new studies.

The new studies helps the women figure out how much exercise is sufficient to keep from tipping the scales again. It involved more than 34, 000 women from US and looked at how much weight they gained over a period of 13 years, from 1992 to 2007.

The women were divided into three groups: a) those who engaged in less than 150 minutes of moderate-level physical activity per week; b) those who performed 150 to 420 minutes of this type of activity per week; and c) those who did more than 420 minutes per week, which comes out to one hour a day. Moderate-level activities included the activities like brisk walking, gardening and leisurely bicycling.

On the average, women gained about 6 pounds or 2.6 Kilos, during the study period. The women in the lesser activity- the a and the b groups, gained significantly more weight than those who exercised more than 420 minutes a week.

The more physical activity was associated with the less weight gain. This finding only held true for 'normal' weight women, those with body mass index (BMI) of 25 or less. Among more-than-normal-weight women, there was no relationship between how much activities they did and what weight they gained.

The researcher say that the physical activity levels included in the study were not very high and higher levels might be more sufficient at preventing weight gain.

Many people have the trouble with keeping off the weight-loss programs which can help losing weight. This results in putting on the weight which is lost or some times more than that, as the weight creeps back on again.

The results of the study are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.